This invention relates to transferring records between incompatible databases.
Databases are collections of data entries which are organized, stored, and manipulated in a manner specified by applications known as database managers (hereinafter, the term “database” also refers to a database manager combined with a database proper). The manner in which database entries or records are organized in a database is known as the record structure of the database. Fields and records of a database may have many different characteristics depending on the database's purpose-and utility.
Databases can be said to be incompatible with one another when the data structure (or record structure) of one is not the same as the data structure (or record structure) of another, even though some of the content of the records is substantially the same. For example, one database may store names and addresses in the following fields: FIRST_NAME, LAST_NAME, and ADDRESS. Another database may, however, store the same information with the following structure: NAME, STREET_NO., STREET_NAME, CITY_STATE, and ZIP. Although the content of the records is intended to contain the same kind of information, the organization of that information is completely different.
Often users of incompatible databases want to be able to transfer records from one database to another incompatible database to populate the incompatible database with new records or to synchronize the two databases with one another. To do so, typically, a field map is used which is a set of relationships or correlations between the fields of the two databases to one another. Various types of data structures can be used to represent a field map in computer memory. Field mapping is generally described in the commonly assigned U.S. Pat. No. 5,392,390, incorporated herein by reference.